YouthBuild Walmart Foundation grants

[Philanthropy News Digest] The Walmart Foundation has announced a $2.6 million grant to YouthBuild USA to support education and job training for low-income youth.

The grant will provide training in green building skills to two thousand 16- to 24-year-olds while they work toward their GEDs or high school diplomas. Through YouthBuild programs, the young people will help build affordable housing units for homeless and poor people in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia, Vermont, Wisconsin, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

“The Walmart Foundation Awards $2.6 Million to YouthBuild USA.” Walmart Foundation Press Release 8/11/10.

Nonprofit ranked as top national builder

[From Philanthropy News Digest] With the housing and financial crises having dealt a blow to the nation's large, publicly traded home builders, Habitat for Humanity has emerged as one of the top builders in the country, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Habitat, which was founded thirty-four years ago in Americus, Georgia, to build, repair, and rehabilitate homes for low-income families, recently was ranked eighth on a closely watched industry list compiled by Builder magazine of the nation's top ten builders, based on the number of homes sold and closed. Habitat's closings were down by 3 percent in 2009, to 5,294, while two of its competitors on the list, the Ryland Group and Hovnanian Enterprise, saw their closings fall by 30 percent and 50 percent, respectively. "We're a lot less tied to the market as a whole," said Mark Andrews, Habitat's senior director for U.S. operations. "We've been able to keep chugging along at a pretty solid pace."

This was the first year Habitat appeared on the Builder list, and it could be the last. The nation's public home builders, itching for recovery, have been ramping up construction, while Habitat is focusing its attention on acquiring and rehabilitating vacant, foreclosed homes and making them available for sale. The recession also has strained Habitat's finances; last year, the organization laid off 8 percent of its corporate staff and its year-over-year cash donations declined by 9 percent, to $171.8 million.

Governor Rendell Announces More Than $600 Million Available For School Districts for New Construction, Energy-Savings, and Science

Dozens of school districts across Pennsylvania will get a funding boost for a wide range of new construction projects, with attractive financing that will save hundreds of millions of dollars, Governor Edward G. Rendell announced today. Learn more.

Weatherization

Pennsylvanians are invited to offer feedback on proposed changes to the state’s weatherization program intended to better serve the public and help residents lower their energy bills, the Department of Community and Economic Development said today. Learn more. View plan changes.

Innovative Energy Retrofits

[From Philanthropy News Journal] The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has announced a call for proposals related to innovative, scalable strategies for energy efficiency retrofit programs or policies that address the existing building stock in the United States.

Funding priorities include but are not limited to sustainable and scalable business models for implementing energy efficiency retrofits; policies or programs that seek to advance aggregation of disparate or fragmented opportunities in energy efficiency retrofits to increase the energy savings potential; innovative financing models and other mechanisms to ease upfront costs of efficiency improvements or increase the attractiveness of investments in energy efficiency; policies or programs to secure greater energy efficient performance in buildings such as through benchmarking or improved operations and management; policies or programs to drive deep energy efficiency retrofits in existing buildings; policies or programs to address split incentives; and mechanisms to increase the effectiveness of and property owner participation in state, local, utility-sponsored, or privately-sponsored energy efficiency programs (proposed partnerships between such programs and applicants for DDCF support are encouraged.

Proposals may be targeted to any particular barrier or segment of the buildings market (e.g., office, commercial, institutional, retail, residential, single-family, or multi-family). Research to help formulate programs or policies to address barriers is eligible as long as the path to implementation or adoption is clear.

The foundation will invite full proposals based on from pre-proposals, with grant l ranging from $100,000 to $350,000 each. Up to a total of $3 million in grants will be awarded.

Applicants must be U.S. nonprofit 501(c)(3) organizations.

For more information and an online application from, visit the DDCF Web site.

ENERGY EFFICIENCY FINANCE FORUM

THE 4th ANNUAL ENERGY EFFICIENCY FINANCE FORUM

"Financing, Capital, & Deal Sourcing for Energy Efficiency"
May 20-21, 2010
The Standard Club Chicago, IL

Register today and don't miss the 4th annual Energy Efficiency Finance Forum! There are only 2 weeks left to register! If you're looking for financing, new deal structuring ideas or brand-new investment opportunities in the EE landscape, this event is for you. This conference is presented by American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy and Financial Research Associates. This is taking place May 20th - 21st, 2010 at The Standard Club, Chicago, IL.

For more information go to: http://www.aceee.org/conf/10finance/10financeindex.htm or contact

Kathie Eberhard | Business Development Team Lead
Financial Research Associates, LLC
704-341-2439(phone) 704-341-2641(fax)
Email: keberhard@frallc.com

Home Depot grants

[From Philanthropy News Digest] The Home Depot Foundation supports nonprofit organizations dedicated to creating and preserving healthy, affordable homes as the cornerstone of sustainable communities. The foundation's goal is for all families to have the opportunity to live in healthy, efficient homes they can afford over the long-term; to have access to safe, vibrant parks and greenspaces; and to receive the economic, social, and environmental benefits of living in a sustainable community.

Through the Affordable Housing Built Responsibly grant program, the foundation administers millions of dollars in grants each year to nonprofit organizations whose missions align with the foundation's interests. To better support its mission, the foundation awards most of its grants by directly soliciting proposals from high-performing nonprofit organizations with the demonstrated ability to create strong partnerships, impact multiple communities, and leverage grant resources. In order to identify potential future nonprofit partners or respond to unique community revitalization opportunities, a limited amount of unsolicited grant funding is set aside to be awarded through a competitive process.

Preference is given to proposals that include community engagement that results in the production, preservation, or financing of housing units for low- to moderate-income families. The most promising proposals incorporate a number of "green" building design practices.

The foundation makes grants only to 501(c)(3) tax-exempt public charities in the United States and to charitable organizations in Canada.